While tens of millions of Americans are wringing their hands and wondering whether or not their jobs are ever going to come back, Joe Biden is promising to eliminate the employment prospects of tens of thousands of additional people. How? By killing the Keystone XL pipeline. Assuming such a feat is even possible without risking the government losing a very expensive lawsuit, the downstream impact of such a decision would produce plenty of totally avoidable disasters for people in multiple states. And at the same time, at least under current conditions in the oil market, it would have almost no impact whatsoever on fossil fuel consumption. So why do it? To pander to the environmentalist left in an election year, of course. (Free Beacon)
Joe Biden will kill the Keystone XL pipeline project if elected, his campaign said Monday, a move that would likely cost thousands of jobs and millions in local tax revenue.
That termination would cost tens of thousands of jobs, which would result in billions of dollars in lost wages, according to estimates published last year by the State Department. Those reductions would in turn cost state and local governments millions in tax revenue, up to 10 percent of annual property tax revenues in 17 counties across three states.
Bidens announcement is just his latest move to shore up credibility among the Democratic partys environmentalist base, which has vocally opposed the pipeline since the project was first started in 2010. Doing so, however, will likely further alienate the top Democrat from voters in oil-rich swing states like Pennsylvaniawhile, one expert told the Washington Free Beacon, likely having little actual impact on fossil fuel consumption.
A senior fellow in energy policy at the R Street Institute is quoted in the linked report, describing Bidens promise as a pander. But its a pander without much meaning given the current state of the oil and gas industry. The Keystone pipeline is intended to bring complex oil down to the United States from Canadas tar sands (actually bitumen) fields.